[python-committers] More explicit Code of Conduct for the issue tracker & core mailing lists?

[Brett Cannon]

Three things. One, I won't hold this view against you, Steven, nor should
anyone else. You expressed an opinion politely and it wasn't somehow
prejudiced against a group of people. You should never worry about
expressing an unpopular opinion as long as it's done with respect and not
flat-out evil like being racist or something. The whole point of CoCs is to
make it so people feel welcome to express themselves.

Two, the PSF CoC is not retroactively applied to all things. For instance,
this list does not fall under the CoC (notice no mention in the footer nor
at https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers). So deciding
to apply the PSF CoC to all things related to the development of Python
would require something like a PEP.

And three, we need a CoC. Not to explicitly call anyone out, but in the
past week or so I have heard peoples' ideas called "ridiculous" and been
told to "shut up" on various mailing lists. I have met people at PyCon
numerous times who have viewed at least python-dev as at minimum cold and
possibly hostile to people, and that's simply not the kind of environment I
would like to foster. I honestly think all of us -- including me -- have
been way too tolerant of core devs having bad attitudes and not calling
them out on it, especially when they simply got too passionate and lost
their composure (the magic of email is we can think before we send so
tolerating outbursts of any regularity really shouldn't happen). Part of
this tolerance for bad attitudes has been cultural, but having a CoC would
help to start changing that by making people feel comfortable in standing
up and stating they thought someone had been rude.

Anyway, that's why I support having a CoC that applies to everything
involving Python's development.

-Brett from a tablet

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 21:21 Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 12:29:52PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> [...]
> > I think their guidelines align pretty well with the way we try to run
> > the CPython issue tracker and the core mailing lists, but we don't
> > currently spell out those expectations for newcomers (or potential
> > newcomers) as clearly as they have.
> >
> > Would folks mind if I drafted a CPython Code of Conduct inspired by
> > their example, and proposed it for inclusion in the Developer's Guide?
>
> Is there an actual social problem you are trying to solve here, or have
> you just run out of things to do? :-)
>
> The PFS has had a CoC for over a year now. I haven't seen any reduction
> in "bad behaviour" (it was so low that it would be hard to go any
> lower), but in my opinion it seems that people are even less inclined to
> express unpopular viewpoints and more inclined to stay silent. I don't
> know if that is due to the CoC. I haven't seen anyone directly threated
> by it for voicing an unpopular opinion, but I know that its at the back
> of my mind whenever I think about posting. If people don't like what I
> have to say, can they use the CoC to threaten me? That makes me
> self-censor all the time, and I don't mean "Am I being a dick?". I mean
> "How unpopular will this opinion be?"
>
> I spent a *long* time thinking about whether or not I should send this
> and go against the multitude of +1s, and I'm not sure that people aren't
> going to hold it against me. (What sort of monster must I be to be
> against a CoC and in favour of trolls and abuse?) I know of other
> forums, not Python related, where what I am saying certainly would be
> held against me for being "disruptive".
>
> To me, a CoC has a definite chilling effect when it comes to voicing
> opinions that go against the majority. It's hard enough to swim against
> the tide of popular opinion even in the absense of formal rules that can
> be used against you. If there was a genuine problem with trolls and
> abuse on the tracker, then I would consider stronger measures than what
> we already have in place (i.e. social disapproval, and the ability to
> close people's account on the tracker). You don't need a CoC to say to
> somebody "There's no call for that, you went to far, you crossed a
> line."
>
>
>
> --
> Steve
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> python-committers at python.org
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>
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